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Musical Formation of Children

I've been thinking lately about my own early experiences with music and how they contributed to who I am as a person and a musician today. There are so many memories, seemingly long forgotten, now remembered in great detail. As I recall those experiences, it seems important to me to attribute some significance to each one.

I recall receiving a one-octave set of colored, plastic tone bells one Christmas and going with my father on his pastoral visits to shut-ins of the congregation and playing hymns for them. There was my first solo piano performance of "Silent Night" at a Sunday school program when I had to scamper up the chancel steps on my hands and knees. There were many hours of learning and playing piano and organ duets at home with my mother. I used to sit silently in an adjoining room as my mother gave piano and organ lessons; then I went to the piano to play the material immediately after the student left. There was playing my first organ postlude at age 7, singing alto in the adult choir at age 8, and my playing the organ for my first wedding at age 8. The church choir even occasionally sang my very first efforts at composing and arranging musical responses for worship. I had my first choir accompanying job at age 11 and my first steady choir directing position at age 13.

In all of those experiences, of course, there were many who took the time and care to encourage me. I haven't quite figured out yet the full significance of these experiences in my musical formation, but I know that each was important.

I was invited to contribute a chapter to Hugh Ballou's new book, Transforming Power (Discipleship Resources, 2008). My chapter ("He Is Not Yet What God Would Have Him To Be") is about a boy in one of the churches I served. Justin first joined my choir at age 3, and he stayed with me in singing and bell choirs, helping with various music and worship-related tasks, choir tours, concerts and musicals through his graduation from high school. Through those years, I watched Justin become a strong young man, a dedicated leader, and a person filled with promise for the future. I took great pride and joy in having a part in his formation as a leader and in the role that music played in that formation. When he was wounded in Iraq and nearly lost a leg, he told me that in those first days of great confusion and pain after the bombing, it was the songs and hymns he had learned in our choirs that he kept singing in his mind and into his pillow. It was his musical formation that gave him the strength to get through the ordeal of survival, recovery, and rehabilitation. Today Justin still has the promise and possibility of being a great leader.

It is all too easy for leaders of children's music to become caught up in the details and requirements of scheduling, learning the words and notes, gaining the support and cooperation of the parents, providing costumes and robes, arranging for snacks and transportation . . . . As we lead and direct, we may forget what impact we can have on the development of these young ones. How will what we sing and how we sing it affect them? Are they learning anything that will stay with them? Will the songs they sing and the notes they play make them better adults? Will they love God and serve the needs of others because they were in the church when we led the music? What an awesome privilege and responsibility we church musicians have!

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